Rejecting a Wrong “Receiving” of Christ

A. W. Tozer intimately knew God like few men in the 20th century.  In his work, “The Pursuit of God,” he excoriates the easy-believism of much Christianity and the spiritual laziness it has produced.  He writes

How tragic that we in this dark day have had our seeking done for us by our teachers. Everything is made to center upon the initial act of “accepting” Christ . . . and we are not expected thereafter to crave any further revelation of God to our souls. We have been snared in the coils of a spurious logic which insists that if we have found Him, we need no more seek Him. This is set before us as the last word in orthodoxy, and it is taken for granted that no Bible-taught Christian ever believed otherwise. Thus the whole testimony of the worshiping, seeking, singing church on that subject is crisply set aside. The experiential heart-theology of a grand army of fragrant saints is rejected in favor of a smug interpretation of Scripture which would certainly have sounded strange to an Augustine, a Rutherford or a Brainerd.

In the midst of this great chill there are some, I rejoice to acknowledge, who will not be content with shallow logic. They will admit the force of the argument, and then turn away with tears to hunt some lonely place and pray, “O God, show my thy glory.”  They want to taste, to touch with their hearts, to see with their inner eyes the wonder that is God.

The Pursuit of God, pp. 14-15 (Google books online edition).